As someone who plays the love confession and any doki-doki parts of shoujo anime on repeat, Tsurezure Children was like a dream come true. Watching the first episode was like getting a highlight reel of all the best moments in shoujo anime (without most of the typical shoujo tropes), and the rest of the anime did not disappoint.

Tsurezure Children is a 12-episode short that features an ensemble cast and follows the relationships of ten different couples from the same high school, some of which get together, some of which don’t, and some of which end on a high note that had me crying about a season two. While the anime is based on a 4-koma manga, it is not necessary to have read it before watching.

Though the idea of keeping up with ten couples may seem daunting, each of the characters in the anime have very different personalities and distinct character designs, so it’s extremely easy to remember them, their relationships, and pick up each of their storylines no matter how many scenes (or episodes) may have been in between. The combinations of interesting personalities and characters in the relationships make the show engaging no matter what couple is on screen. And though I had my favorites, I was never tempted to tune out or even skip the scenes with couples I was less invested in.

Each of the relationships have their own distinct dynamic, and I think the anime did a great job of balancing out humorous scenes with actually very sweet and heartwarming ones. The development of these couple is also surprisingly realistic and not only did it give me many, many, many scenes to squeal over and play on repeat, the anime also managed to capture the awkwardness of being a high school couple, the nerves of confessing, and the build-up of a first kiss in a very real but entertaining way.

My only gripe with the anime is that it focuses more heavily on four couples out of the possible ten, especially towards the second half of the season. These few couples get more scenes and also appear more frequently throughout the anime. This leads to some great relationship development and wrap ups for these couples in particular, which I loved, but it left some other couples in the dust.

Some of the couples established early on in the series are just dropped and don’t get any kind of resolution. And I’m not talking about couples that never get together, as that was actually a part of the anime that I liked: it wasn’t a given that all couples would be endgame. However, there are couples that just completely disappear from the anime, with no sort of resolution at all.

While I understand that this had to be done to try to balance out multiple relationships on top of being a short, I wish the studio either would have been less ambitious with the number of couples they tried to show (as I know they already omitted quite a few couples from the manga, so why not a few more) or at least allowed for a quick one to two minute scene that at least gave us some sort of wrap up.

The couples that it spends more time on are some of my favorites though, and I think it’s definitely worth it to watch the anime even just for those couples. Overall, I would recommend this anime to anyone who is a fan of romance, but does not want to sit through 10+ episodes of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and general avoidance before having the series end when the main couple finally get together. As Tsurezure Children is a short, it’s a fairly quick watch, so if you have a couple free hours, I definitely recommend checking this out.